Jeff Dossett, Executive Producer and General Manager at MSN, is doing something amazing. He, and two other elite mountaineers, are heading up to the summit of Mt. Everest build awareness of (PRODUCT) RED and to inspire individuals to do amazing things. Windows is an Official Sponsor of this expedition along with Dell, MSN, MSNBC.com and several supporting partners.

A Windows Live Space has been set up called Everest Team INSPI(RED) for you to show your support for their endeavor and to follow their journey with blog posts, photos and videos. You will also be able to sign the guestbook and share your personal inspirations.

The (PRODUCT) RED Theme Pack is also available where you can download Windows Live Hotmail Signatures as well as Emoticons and Winks for Windows Live Messenger. You'll find the links to the downloads on the right sidebar of the Everest Team INSPI(RED) Windows Live Space under "Show your support!". And a desktop gadget is available for Windows Sidebar in Windows Vista to track the elevation of the expedition on their way up Mt. Everest.

As of yesterday - the team is at 16,000 feet! Hopefully their amazing journey will inspire

While most people are thinking of upgrading their computer, it remains that several preventive maintenance measures such as the usual hard drive defragmentation are still reliable if you sometimes wonder why your computer suddenly slows down. Similar to the old practices, we cannot avoid system crashes or sudden cases of lost files owing to unforeseen circumstances such as power failures or forced rebooting.

These instances are the main reasons why lost fragments are often present in computers. Improper shutdown of your computer will always provide problems and most of the time they will be identified once your computer starts to slow down.

We can always take the fast way out. Placing additional memory chips or upgrading to a higher processor is a good idea. But do remember, they are alternatives that you can save on if you think logical. Sometimes the problem is not in the hardware but the people-ware who do not know the standard means of maintaining their computer system.

It would be wise to schedule your defragmentation practices. They can really do a lot to improve your operating system and make sure that you get the best performance for

MVP, MCT, and Blogger Mitch Garvis has posted the first in a series of articles about new server solutions for small and mid sized businesses.

Essential Business Server: Coming soon to a mid-sized company near you!

For years I have been saying that Small Business Server was the best solution for small businesses that did not have huge IT budgets; it allowed them to take advantage of the same enterprise-level tools such as Microsoft Exchange Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint Server without having to purchase several servers with tens of thousands of dollars of software, not to mention a full-time IT department.

Several people and groups have challenged me with 'what if' scenarios intent on debunking the applicability of SBS to their specific business network scenario, and I have always been glad to address these challenges because most of them were based on myths.  The truth is that to date I have not heard of any scenario where SBS could not be deployed in a small business as the backbone infrastructure, with one exception: The Hard Ceiling.

of course I am referring to the two great licensing limitations of SBS:

1. You can only have a single SBS server in your network environment; and
2. You were

What has booting to do with my computer?
The term booting is short for bootstrapping, which refers to a process by which a simple control system starts up a more complicated system such as an operating system. The term may have been taken from a story about Baron Münchhausen who pulled himself out of the sea by tugging on his own boot straps.

What is BIOS?
On PCs, the simple control system that starts up the operating system is called a BIOS. The acronym stands for Basic Input/Output System. When your PC starts up the first few things you see are managed by this BIOS system. It resides in a chip on the motherboard of the computer and manages the computer’s hardware. It is rare for anyone to have to do anything in the BIOS, and it is not recommended for the novice to fiddle with it. The most common change to BIOS settings that has to be made is to change the boot order; that is, the order in which the BIOS looks for an operating system on the various drives. Usually the main hard drive is top of the list, but if you need to reinstall…

Brandon Paddock, who works on the Windows Shell Team here at Microsoft, wrote a Windows Sidebar Gadget that displays the status of the Windows Search Indexer.

Download the Indexer Status Gadget here.

I don't know about you but I think it's kind of neat being able to see how many files Windows Search has indexed on my PC right from my desktop. For folks giving the Windows Search 4.0 Preview a try, you can enable "Index Now" functionality (which is reflected in the above screenshot).

Brandon Paddock developed this gadget on his own time and isn't officially supported by Microsoft. Brandon also developed the Start++ search add-on for Windows Vista.